NNN Sells Prime LA McDonald’s Location to Burger Joint for Double the Usual Value [Updated]
By Alison Stateman July 2, 2018 11:25 am
reprints
Giovanni Oliva and Mike Knudsen of the NNN Properties Group, previously with the Stan Johnson Company, have sold a McDonald’s location in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles to the burger giant for a whopping $4.8 million—double what a property deal of this type usually goes for—early last week Commercial Observer has learned.
The single-tenant ground lease property at 405 North Alvarado Street owned by Bayham Trust was put on the market for the first time in more than 20 years, with four-and-a-half years remaining on the ground lease. McDonald’s Corporation ultimately exercised its right of refusal, matching and thwarting the offers of several suitors looking to scoop up the small 2,513-square-foot building (with a profitable drive-thru in car-centric L.A.), but high-visibility property, situated on a 20,000-square-foot lot at the cross streets of North Alvarado and West Temple.
Oliva and Knudsen represented the family trust. McDonald’s was self-represented. McDonald’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It’s generational real estate,” Oliva said. “You’ve got trustees that owned it and had an emotional attachment. They’re not necessarily active net lease investors and they were concerned with leaving money on the table, so we went out at a very aggressive cap rate, a 3 percent cap. The closest market comp they could find was a McDonald’s property in the San Fernando Valley that sold for a 3.27 cap rate, but the tenant had recently signed a 20-year lease. The big thing was there were only four years left on the lease and that presents risks for the investor. Are they going to sign a new lease or vacate and, if they vacate, who are you going to put in?”
Despite the odds and challenges of putting it on the market during Thanksgiving and the subsequent holiday season and subsequent rising interest rates, they stayed the course.
“We got multiple offers, but we knew what the property was worth. We thought McDonald’s would buy it because of the intrinsic value of the real estate. The signage is huge. That alone from a business point of view is big, big marketing for these guys,” Oliva said.
